The Schedule

I love Excel spreadsheets. I know - that's SHOCKING to those of you who know me. "Liz is a listmaker?" you say? YES. I love lists and I love to be able to sort lists. I love to be able to look for patterns and routine. So when we first brought Jude home, we wanted to be able to keep track of all the new baby things we'd need to take care of like feeding and diapering. I was also pumping exclusively for a few days, and we needed to track that, too. Lindsay and I both use Excel extensively for work, so, of course, Lindsay whipped up a little something. (Feel free to use this, if you're into that kind of thing).

We're at a point now where we don't really need to track all this stuff back any further than the last diaper change or the last feeding. While I'd love to be able to use something like www.babybix.com, it's not quite feasible for a non-smartphone-owning fool like me. Instead, I rely quite heavily on one of my FAVORITE mom tools, the Itzbeen timer. We registered for this little timer gadget and the fabulous Deb Taylor purchased it for us (THANKS, Deb!). It's about the size of a cell phone and includes timers that count up from the last feeding, diaper, and sleep, plus a bonus timer that I use for tracking time between pumpings. It also has a clock and a nightlight/flashlight, which is FANTASTIC when I'm getting up in the middle of the night and padding into the nursery.

So there you have it... schedule essentials for a routine-obsessed mom. Maybe you know another new mom who loved a good schedule, or maybe you are one. Either way, I hope this offers some practical help!